


to me you are a work of art

by thischarmingmutant



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Charles in a Wheelchair, Emma is a Good Bro, Erik You WIll Be Drunk, Erik is Crushing Harder than a 12-year Old Girl, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 12:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8668471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thischarmingmutant/pseuds/thischarmingmutant
Summary: It’s the eyes. It’s those impossible blue eyes that do him in.Erik’s never seen anything like them. Erik, who normally has more words for blue – and can coax each one out of paint – than any other words he’s likely to speak aloud on a given day, is at a loss. He articulates this as such with a drawn-out sigh, a thump of his head against the bar, and a rather disgruntled “Shot, please” muttered into the crook of his arm.*In which Erik the artist struggles to articulate his crush on Charles in words or in paint, Emma's all ears and all booze and all wisecracks at Erik's expense, and Raven provides the coffee and the Charles that keep Erik awake.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Athrisen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athrisen/gifts).



> Written for Athrisen for the Secret Mutant Exchange 2016. The request was: "Erik is a jeweller/artist/writer who's muse has been the gorgeous neighbour/cashier/waiter he's been bumping into a lot lately. Charles is a huge fan of Erik's work and is particularly delighted with his latest series. Neither of them know the other personally/match face to name." 
> 
> As I wrote, inspiration struck and, as it is does, took me a little off course. I went more in the direction of Erik seeing Charles as his muse but being unable to capture that in his work, much to his frustration. I had a lot of fun writing a totally smitten Erik, though, and I hope that you like it!
> 
> The title is from the [Morrissey song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R8EkrZVq8A) of the same name. It's a very Erik song, I think.

It’s the eyes. It’s those impossible blue eyes that do him in.

Erik’s never seen anything like them. Erik, who normally has more words for blue – and can coax each one out of paint – than any other words he’s likely to speak aloud on a given day, is at a loss. A _devastating_ loss. He articulates this as such with a drawn-out sigh, a thump of his head against the bar, and a rather disgruntled “Shot, please” muttered into the crook of his arm.

Emma rolls her eyes, but she’s already reaching for the bottle of whiskey – “the good stuff,” Erik mumbles, predictable and petulant – and she sets it and a glass in front of the slumped figure at her bar. “Sure, sugar,” she says. “It’ll cost you a story, though.”

Erik raises his head up enough to scowl at her. When she moves to take the bottle back, he straightens up and snatches it close. “That’s what I thought,” she smirks.

“Evil woman.”

“Evil woman who can close out your standing tab at any time.” Emma arches a perfect eyebrow expectantly.

“Blessed woman,” Erik corrects and knocks back a shot. His lips quirk a little. “A queen among women; a saint amidst mere mortals.”

That gets Erik a decidedly indelicate snort. “So spill, Lehnsherr. I haven’t got all night.”

As if Emma tending bar at her own establishment isn’t in great part so she can needle Erik all night while still plying him with alcohol. She’s a good friend, really. Erik sighs and pours himself another shot. “It’s like this,” he begins.

*

More than whiskey at Frost’s Tavern, Erik lives for the coffee at The Mystique. He thinks he might literally have died without it by now, walking into oncoming traffic or an open manhole somewhere in Manhattan. Erik is what you would call, if you were being polite and terribly underwhelming, “not a morning person.” Raven, who runs The Mystique, would say it’s more of a case of Erik being “an inarticulate moaning groaning irritable mess of a zombie person who should be goddamn grateful that his money is a good as anyone else’s; now, don’t burn your mouth again, _the coffee is hot_ , you weirdo.” Raven is also a queen among women, and Erik long ago decided not to examine closely why the only women in his life are beautiful hell beasts who coddle and insult him, often simultaneously, and he _pays_ them for it. That they have not yet met is perhaps the second-most blessing in his miserable existence.

The foremost blessing? And likewise, the source of his misery? Raven’s brother, he of the impossible blue eyes: Charles Xavier.

Erik has been getting his caffeine fix at The Mystique for going on two years now, and although his friendship with Raven is strange, a friendship it is, and so the new addition to their morning routine wasn’t a surprise in and of itself. He’d heard all about Charles, the beloved adoptive brother and Oxford graduate who was moving to New York to teach genetics at NYU. Charles, who was kindness itself, if a bit arrogant too, with an unfortunate penchant for tweed, she’d explained. Charles, who Erik was by no means to scare away with his “sharkface attempts at a smile, no matter how much Charles loves The Discovery Channel.” Charles, who has been living in Manhattan and a fixture in Erik’s daily life for almost two months now, and Erik has yet to utter anything remotely multisyllabic at him. He’d like to lay the blame on his status as a horrible mess of a zombie person, but by the time Charles shows up at the shop each morning, Erik’s usually already gone through two cups of coffee. No, Erik has a problem.

Erik’s problem is that Charles is beautiful, unfortunate tweed and all, and even caffeinated, it’s too much to expect of Erik that he avoid getting lost in the man’s eyes _and_ manage to string together a coherent sentence at the same time. In fact, Erik has taken recently to wearing sunglasses indoors so that he can gaze at Charles without attracting attention. Sure, it dulls that spectacular blue a bit, and it also makes him look like a massive douche, but Erik can live with that. Upon interrogation and harassment from The Mystique’s staff about this eccentricity, Erik claimed light sensitivity, and Raven seems to have concluded today that Erik must be habitually hungover – “it’s a week day, Erik; that’s very sad” - and, indeed, looks decidedly douchey. When Charles elbowed his sister in dismay and claimed that, with his leather jacket and turtleneck along with the dark sunglasses, he thought Erik looked rather suave and “James Deanish” actually, Erik sputtered wildly and nearly choked on his coffee. Charles had wheeled his chair forward in alarm, gorgeous eyes wide as saucers as he practically showered Erik in napkins.

“I’m fine,” Erik had muttered crossly, swatting at Charles as the man tried to dab at the pathetic dribble of coffee on his chin. He’d tossed a tip on the table and high-tailed it out of there, thinking about Charles’s big blue eyes, full of concern, and his sure, but gentle hands all the rest of the morning. And also well into the evening, if he were to be honest.

*

A banner day in Erik Lehnsherr’s love life. He tells Emma all of this, and he’s a little concerned that she might pull a muscle laughing at him.

*

“Oh, darling boy, what are we going to do with you?” Emma pours herself a shot now and nudges the bottle toward Erik. He needs little convincing to down another too. He's already had...a few.

“It’s not just… _that_ ,” he insists, gesturing vaguely with the intent of encompassing his mortification, his stained turtleneck, the general dumpster fire that is his entire person, and Charles’s incredibly inconvenient impossible beautiful blue eyes. “It’s affecting my work!”

Emma’s eyebrows communicate deftly, _do go on; this should be interesting._

“Not my work-work,” he mutters, thinking darkly for a moment about his day job. Arranging clothing displays in the Men’s Department at Macy’s pays the bills – and the employee discount is nothing to turn his nose up at – but it’s hardly what he thought he’d be doing with a degree in Fine Arts. And he _hates_ his co-workers. Their continual attempts to involve him in interdepartmental gossip have truly been becoming painful lately. What does he care if so-and-so from Cosmetics is banging whatshername in Furniture – _on_ the furniture? And don’t even get him started on the betting pools over the holiday displays. If a promotion – or a gambling win - is dependent upon whether he can do something more impressive with garland than strangling himself or someone else with it, he’ll stay where he is, thank you. So getting to go home each day to a blank canvas and the freedom and possibility of paint? To surround himself in color and forms that aren’t beige mannequins and wooly piles of navy and pinstripe? To create something from nothing, and to know even if no one sees it, even if it never sells, that it’s his? That it has meaning? It’s at least as essential to Erik’s health and well-being - and relative sanity – as Frost’s Tavern and The Mystique.

But now there’s a Charles problem, and it refuses to be contained by the coffee shop. It follows him home to his studio, it’s wormed its way in between him, Emma, and the whiskey, and okay, it _is_ affecting his work-work too. His boss told him today that his display incorporated too many shades of blue. Goddamn _blue_.

“I can’t _paint_ ,” Erik laments. He twirls the shot glass between his fingers, dully observing the way it catches the dim light of the bar. The ring of liquor clinging to the bottom is so many browns and yellows and oranges and reds if you look hard enough, but right now it’s just the same muddy color as the coffee stain on his turtleneck. Everything looks muddy and dull, including the colors he tried to mix before he’d trashed another canvas and came out to see Emma.

“I can’t see anything but him, and I can’t _paint_ him,” he tells her. Erik had stared at the canvas, and all he could see was how Charles’s face could fill it. And so he tried – not for the first time – to capture the man in his art, but he just couldn’t get it right. The blues of Charles’s eyes – they become flat under his brush, nothing of the constant sea change of when Charles speaks. Charles’s eyes are swift and sparkling as he rhapsodizes to anyone in the shop who will listen - about the latest breakthrough in his research, or how delighted he is with one of his students’ projects, or how delicious his tea tastes that morning, nevermind when Raven reminds him “it’s the same as I make it every morning, Charles.” Erik has said so few words to the man, but he takes in Charles’s ravenously, filing them away to turn over later like something precious, remembering the way his ripe red lips form over the syllables. Who would've thought that "genetic mutation" could ever sound so seductive? Abandoning the blue blobs of failures on his palette, Erik tried to create that candy apple red, the same one that flushes Charles’s cheeks when he wheels into The Mystique each morning, the cold, gray weather only making him all the more vibrant. It wasn’t the right shade. He tried to sketch, to put down on paper the boyish curve of Charles’s cheeks, the ridiculous flop of his hair, the subtle musculature in his arms, hidden under all of those cardigans, but to no avail. He’d left the floor of his studio littered with crumpled balls of paper, like so much snow. Like, but not enough like, Charles’s milky skin.

“Honey, you’ve got it bad.” Emma eyes him knowingly as Erik startles back into the present. “Have you thought about taking up poetry instead?”

So he’d said more of that out loud than he’d thought. He offers Emma a withering glare. Her amused concern remains, as to be expected, unabated. “Are you going to mock me, or are you going to help me?” Erik frowns at his shot glass and then at the nearly empty bottle next to it. “Or are you going to give me more alcohol until I don’t care that you’re mocking me?”

Instead, Emma replaces the bottle with a glass of water. “All right, fine.” He takes a few gulps and admittedly feels the better for it. “So I should talk to him, right?”

Emma says nothing.

“I know. I need to talk to him. As in an actual conversation." Erik rolls his eyes at himself. "Remember he’s a person, not just a collage of gorgeous parts and pieces." It's difficult not to let his mind drift off to those gorgeous parts, though. He really hasn't given nearly enough attention to the freckles on Charles's nose. _Focus, Erik. Get out of your head,_ he scolds himself. "And let him know I’m not just some monosyllabic James Dean wannabe.” Erik nods, taking little note of Emma’s smirk. She can keep her mocking to herself; he's doing the pep talk work for her here. “Tomorrow,” he decides. “Tomorrow, I’ll ask him out. Not for coffee, obviously, or for a drink. Not at The Mystique, not here.” Erik looks at Emma with dawning horror. “Where do I take him? A museum? A play? Some sort of British tea thing?” There’s a faint sheen of sweat at his hairline. He pulls on the top of his turtleneck slightly, and Emma lets her smirk drift into a warm slip of a smile.

“A museum would be fine, I think. In fact,” she muses, pulling out her cell phone and flicking through it, “there’s an exhibit on genetic mutation at the Museum of Natural History opening next week.” She shows a rather agitated Erik the web site.

“Next week? Emma, I can’t wait until next week. I’ll lose my nerve by next week. I’ll destroy all of my canvases by next week. I’ll strangle Janos in Men’s Shoes with some holiday-themed shoelaces by next week.” Head in his hands, Erik slumps into the bar once more. “Tomorrow’s Friday, and I’m asking him out tomorrow,” he mutters into the sticky wood of the bar, to which Emma curls her lip in disgust and flicks his forehead until he sits back up. She points at the clock, and Erik groans. Getting up tomorrow is going to be _hell_. He’ll need at least three cups of coffee to be human, possibly four to manage to shove comprehensible words out of his mouth in Charles’s direction. But he’ll do it. He has to.

Only a little wobbly, Erik manages to pull himself up from the stool and make his way to the door.

“Erik.”

Erik waves his hand at Emma without turning back, taking his jacket from the coat rack. “Tomorrow. You’ll see, Emma.” He stumbles a bit, bumping into the coat rack and apologizing to it.

Emma manages to hold in her laughter, but barely. “Erik, dear. Haven’t you forgotten something?”

He turns around at that, holding onto the coat rack for balance now. He pats the pockets of his pants and his jacket, checking for his wallet and his keys. Emma rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but still waits, staring at Erik expectantly.

Furrowing his brow, Erik wracks his brain for what he could possibly be forgetting. “What, are you actually going to make me pay my tab _now_?” Emma chucks the dish rag she’d been wiping the bar down with at him. It smacks him in the face; she’s got a good arm, actually.

“Tomorrow night, Erik. You’re forgetting about tomorrow night."

Erik tosses the dish rag back, missing the bar by about five feet. There’s no shame in that, he thinks. Tomorrow night, he’s going out with Charles. Charles, who will not judge his lack of athletic ability or throw things at him or cut him off from drinking at 2am, presumably. Oh, Charles! Where _is_ he taking Charles? “I’ll figure something out,” he calls back to Emma, opening the door. “I’ll take him somewhere nice! I’ll take him all the way back to England if he wants me to!” And with that, the door slams shut behind him.

Emma sighs to herself. “That’s not what I meant.” She shakes her head, pulls Erik’s bottle of whiskey back out, and finishes it off, straight out of the bottle. One of her employees, who’s mopping up the floor, stares. She hisses at him and shoos him out. She’ll drink out of her own damn bottle in her own damn bar if she damn well pleases. She’d challenge anyone dealing with Erik’s drama not to.

*

The alarm on Erik’s phone ushers in the morning far too early for his liking. The sun seems brighter than usual, painfully so – he’ll _need_ the sunglasses for once – and his head is pounding something fierce. “Frost’s Tavern is terrible, Emma is terrible, whiskey is terrible, _I_ am terrible,” he mutters as he drags himself into the shower. Today will be terrible. He will try to ask Charles out and probably choke on his own spit.

He stares at the blue tile in his shower. Terrible, maybe, but he’s going through with it. He can’t go on like this. Words, his mouth, Charles – they will be happening. After a _lot_ of coffee.

*

Fortunately, The Mystique isn’t far from Erik’s apartment. He would never make it there without pre-caffeinating otherwise. As he pushes open the door, however, he’s startled to find that Charles is already there, his wheelchair parked by Erik’s usual seat in the back corner. “Charles!” he manages. _Stupid_ , he thinks. _Charles knows his own name, Erik. You don’t need to announce it to him upon seeing him._

But Charles flashes him a bright smile, all crisp white teeth and unrestrained cheer, and Erik can’t help but return it reflexively, Raven and the complex she’s given him about his shark face be damned. “Good morning, Erik!” Still smiling widely, Charles gestures toward the table. “Your usual will be out in a minute. Will you have a seat with me?” Erik notices Charles fidgeting slightly, the fingers on his other hand curling and uncurling around the edges of the blanket draped across his lap. Erik thinks about how cold it’s been getting lately and absurdly wishes he knew how to knit, so he could make Charles some mittens. With fingerless gloves, he thinks, so Charles could still wheel his chair, of course.

 _Knitting? Mittens?_ What is he thinking?

“Uh, sure. Thank you.” Erik sits and congratulates himself on forming words out loud. And not the ones about the mittens either. All things considered, it’s going well, really. A nervous laugh nearly escapes him, but he covers it with a cough.

“Oh!” Charles looks at him with unabashed concern. “I hope you’re not taking ill, my friend.”

Erik feels himself flush under Charles’s gaze. “Uh, no, not ill. Just something in my throat. I’m fine. Thank you.” _Congratulations, Erik. Incredibly awkward, but there was a two-syllable word in that verbal diarrhea just now. Emma will be so proud._ Thinking of Emma, Erik remembers (most of) last night’s conversation and his vow to ask Charles out. He clears his throat, only for Raven to show up with his coffee.

“Here you go, Erik.” She regards him with her customary smirk, but there’s something a touch off about it. It’s less…smirky…than usual, and a bit more likes Charles’s kind smile. If a touch mad at the edges, maybe. Erik begins to wonder if he’s still a little drunk before Raven continues. “Straight black to get you started, and you boys let me know when you want something fancier. Peppermint mocha’s the special today, but I’ll get you whatever you want. I know Charles here is _awfully_ thirsty.” She winks at Charles, who sputters around his tea. Erik feels just a little bit vindictive, but considering that Charles manages to keep from spilling all over his cardigan, or his chin, the other man still comes out the victor.

Charles chuckles wryly and dabs a napkin at his lips. “Excuse me. Something in my throat,” he says, his cheeks pink. “So, Erik – “ he begins just as Erik leans forward with a “So, Charles –“

They both laugh, and something in Erik loosens. “You first,” he says, smiling, more softly than he realizes.

Charles grins back at him. “How magnanimous of you.” Stirring his tea, Charles’s eyes drift away from Erik’s for a moment, down to the messenger bag beside him. When he looks up at Erik again, Erik is startled all anew by Charles’s eyes. He’s not sure if he’s ever seen them this close. Erik’s not even wearing his sunglasses, and he lets himself _look_. The blue of those eyes is so vast, so electric and warm all at once. He almost stops breathing.

“I was wondering,” Charles says, interrupting the beginnings of an undoubtedly embarrassingly purple prose-ridden reverie of Erik’s. “I was wondering if you might like to go out with me this evening.” Erik’s afraid his mouth drops open a little, but Charles hurries on. “That is, I was hoping you might like to attend an art show that I also would like to go to, and I thought if you wanted to, we could go together. We could look at the art together.” Charles suddenly shoves a piece of glossy paper at Erik, and it takes a moment for him to focus. Who has eyes for anything when his ears are still stuck on what Charles has just said?

Erik examines the paper and sucks in a breath. It’s a flyer for an exhibition at The Hellfire, the art gallery that Emma took over from her ex-husband Sebastian a few years back. It’s how she and Erik first met, in fact. Sebastian had turned Erik’s work down, but Emma had been impressed with his portfolio and wanted to feature some of his pieces in the first exhibition she’d organized on her own. She took a hands-on approach with the bar and the gallery, even though she had more than enough money to keep them going with little effort on her own part. He’d completely forgotten –

The flyer crinkles as Charles draws attention to it again. The ad for the exhibition shows a few of the works on display, along with the title, the time and date, and the gallery name. Charles meets Erik’s startled gaze and smiles hopefully. “It looks lovely, doesn’t it? This one – " he points to what is, yes, a picture of one of Erik’s paintings, “this is the one that caught my interest. It's so...moving. I don't know what it is, but I saw it and just _felt_ it immediately." He looks at Erik, blushing slightly. "Anyway, it might be fun, don’t you think?” When Erik doesn’t say anything, Charles bites at his lip; Erik’s eyes are drawn to it, away from Charles’s worried blue eyes. That gorgeous mouth all but stutters over the next words. “Raven said you like art.”

“I do!” Erik reassures him. “Very much so.” He places the flyer onto the table, brushing his hand against Charles’s as he does. What are the odds? In all of the turmoil of the past few weeks, he’d all but forgotten about the exhibit. It isn’t a big one for him, but Emma had wanted to include some of his pieces along with some other local artists, and he’d happily agreed but not thought much of it. About a month ago, he’d dropped off the canvases. Mostly old pieces – pre-Charles pieces – but there had been one he’d painted just a few days after Charles had first showed up at The Mystique. Abstract, a study in color – of blue. It’s the one on the flyer. The one Charles had pointed at. Of course it is.

Looking at it now, with Charles looking at him, Erik thinks that while the real thing is far superior, he must’ve gotten something right. He takes Charles’s hand in his and watches as the man’s eyes widen once more, then seem to light up. “I’d love to go with you,” Erik murmurs. “I think it will be…inspiring.”


End file.
